People love experiencing rarities. We flock to see Halley’s Comet when it comes around every 75 years, and to botanical gardens to see the blossoming of a flower that smells like death. There’s a thrill to seeing — or in the case of the flower, smelling — something that few others have. It’s not a unique experience, but it’s close. We likely experience many of little moments like this every day without realizing it. We only register the major events, like comets or death flowers, or Joey Votto pop ups.

Since he first entered the big leagues in 2007, Joey Votto boasts the lowest infield-fly-ball rate among all qualified batters at 1.3%. That figure was slightly lower before yesterday’s game against the Cubs, when he did this.

That’s the first batted ball that Votto has popped up to an infielder in fair territory since September 16th, 2016 — and that previous pop up was caught on the outfield grass, what Play Index describes as being in the “Deep SS-3B hole.” In fact, every pop up to an infielder by Votto in 2016 was described as deep in the hole. To find Votto’s last pop up that was caught by an infielder in fair territory that was actually in the infield, you’d have to go all the way back to May 24th of 2015, when Trevor Bauer got him to pop up to second base.

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Round bat, round ball, traveling in different directions: the eight-word story of hitting really captures some of the difficulty of that practice. When you get into the art of choking up — moving the hands up the barrel and shortening the bat — you uncover a whole world of players attempting to address that difficulty. David Kagan examined the physics of choking up today at The Hardball Times. Here, we ask the practitioners what they think. It turns out, the players serve up some conventional wisdom, but also some insight into the reasoning behind the practice.

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I’ve always loved Bronson Arroyo’s leg kick. There’s some whimsy in it, is maybe why. At the very least, it represents a different mechanical approach than one finds elsewhere in the league.

Turns out, there are reasons against flinging the lead leg out into space like Arroyo does — and yet, his reasons for doing it make some sort of sense, as well. And in between the two, there’s even something about the future of baseball in that kick. It’s a kick that contains multitudes.

First, let’s revel in its glory — in this case, from the hitter’s view. Is it… majestic?

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This started as a post about Eugenio Suarez. Suarez has gotten off to a big offensive start, and that’s drawn a certain amount of attention, yet more behind the scenes, he’s also taken a step forward in the field. The other day a baseball person said he’s gotten about as good at third base as Nolan Arenado. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but even just the idea was enough to push me to Suarez’s player page. And, sure enough, by the numbers we have — DRS and UZR — Suarez is playing like a better third baseman.

I checked to see where Suarez might rank among the most-improved defenders, league-wide. I know it’s early, but I still wanted to see. Suarez ranks super high. Yet near the top of the list, there’s also Jose Peraza. And there’s also Joey Votto. You don’t have to scroll far to find Scott Schebler. Forget about Suarez. I mean, forget about Suarez, individually. What Suarez is doing is interesting, and he’ll get his own post one of these days, but I’m more intrigued by the Reds as a whole defensive unit. It’s played like the league’s best defensive unit.

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There is a pitcher named Wandy Peralta. You’re familiar with the name Wandy, and you’re familiar with the name Peralta, but chances are you aren’t familiar with a name that combines the two. That’s okay. Most of you aren’t Reds fans. This guy pitches for the Reds, and, just to jump ahead to the point — one thing that’s sexy that pitchers do is miss bats. Another thing that’s sexy that pitchers do is work fast. The two generally don’t go hand in hand. There’s a variety of reasons for that. Anyway, this year, 342 pitchers have thrown at least 10 innings. Here are all of them.

On the x-axis: pace

On the y-axis: swinging-strike rate

Highlighted in red: Peralta

Out of those 342 pitchers, Peralta ranks first in pace. And, out of those 342 pitchers, Peralta ranks first in whiff rate. I’m not going to claim that this will continue. I don’t know what Peralta’s going to do from this point forward. But, last year, in a brief cup of coffee, he also worked fast. That just seems to be a part of his game. And the whiffs? Well, Peralta’s gotten better. This is a guy who keeps his fastball in the mid-90s. His preferred secondary pitch had long been a changeup. Now he has a changeup *and* a slider, and a fastball he still throws. Peralta is a reliever who consistently throws three pitches. Think he’s gotten better about locating? Here’s where his pitches have gone.

Peralta wasn’t good in his debut. Missed a lot to his arm side. So far he’s been able to mostly live down. You’d be hard-pressed to find two more different heat maps, and now it’s time for more visuals! Here’s Wandy Peralta throwing a dynamite changeup.

Here’s Wandy Peralta throwing a hilarious slider.

Peralta has thrown 56 sliders. Out of 234 pitchers who have thrown at least 25 sliders, Peralta ranks seventh in swinging-strike rate. Peralta has also thrown 37 changeups. Out of 176 pitchers who have thrown at least 25 changeups, Peralta ranks first in swinging-strike rate. When Peralta’s thrown a slider, it’s gotten a whiff nearly a third of the time. When Peralta’s thrown a changeup, it’s gotten a whiff nearly half of the time. Mid-90s fastball. These pitches. A faster pace than any other pitcher.

When one thinks about the Reds pitching staff, so much focus ends up on Raisel Iglesias and Michael Lorenzen. They deserve it! So does Peralta. I loved him before this little InstaGraphs post. You probably love him now, after.

The Cincinnati Reds are young and rebuilding, so it’s not too much of a surprise that, this year, they’ve had more players make their major-league debuts than any other team. Yesterday, a pitcher named Ariel Hernandez showed up for the first time. He was tasked with some early innings in relief of an unsuccessful starter. Although it’s never easy to make one’s first-ever big-league pitches, some of the pressure is off when your team’s already losing 10-4.

Hernandez entered in the bottom of the fourth. In this post, I’d like to try something. He entered with one out. It took him six pitches to get out of the inning. Hernandez completed two more innings afterward, but I want to look at those six pitches alone. And here’s the idea: I want to estimate Hernandez’s projected ERA at each instant. That is, I want to take a stab at his rest-of-season ERA given only the information provided to me. I knew nothing about Hernandez before, and the same presumably goes for many of you. He’s working now to fill up a blank slate.

Here goes nothing! Six Ariel Hernandez pitches. His first six meaningful pitches, against major-league hitters.

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Last fall, Andrew Miller pitched 19.1 innings in 15 postseason games. Extrapolated out to a full 162-game season, that would equal 209 innings. That is basically an impossible load for the modern reliever. Consider, for context, that the only relief pitcher since World War II to top 170 innings is Mike Marshall, who did it twice, including 208.1 innings in 1974. The last major-league reliever to top 150 innings was Mark Eichhorn in 1986. Since the strike in 1994, Scott Sullivan’s 113.2 reliever innings in 1999 represents the majors’ highest mark. No reliever has crossed the 100-inning threshold in the last decade.

All indications suggest that, if a bullpen revolution is really to occur in baseball, it isn’t simply going to be a matter of a single pitcher recording a ton of innings. Exhibit A in an argument against the reality of an Andrew Miller Revolution is that Andrew Miller himself is only on pace for around 88 innings this season. What Miller did in the postseason last year is likely to remain a product of the postseason.

There might be a different sort of bullpen revolution occurring in Ohio, though. Only, this one isn’t happening in Cleveland. Rather, it’s unfolding about four hours southwest on I-71. If there is a bullpen revolution brewing, it’s happening in Cincinnati.

Consider: if a team were starting a bullpen from scratch and trying to create an ideal bullpen, they would likely abide by three basic principles.

1. Put the best pitchers in the most important situations.
2. Ignore the save statistic.
3. Use the best pitchers for multiple innings.

Let’s evaluate the Reds’ bullpen usage this season so far by each of these three principles.

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Joey Votto is up to something.

One of the game’s most selective hitters — perhaps the game’s best at discerning balls from pitches he can damage over the last decade — is hacking in 2017.

Through the first week of the season, Votto’s zone-swing rate is 90.2%. For his career, however, it’s a much more modest mark of 68.5%. Last season, it was 68.6%. Votto’s out-of-zone swing rate rests at 28.1%, up from 20.8% last season. A graphic featuring the location of pitches against Votto confirms his more liberal approach.

So, what the hell is going on here?

Intrepid Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Zach Buchanan investigated and demanded answers.

“P Double-i P” read the shirt that Cincinnati Reds assistant hitting coach Tony Jaramillo wore around the clubhouse Monday at PNC Park. It was a gift from first baseman Joey Votto, and it translates to “Put it in Play.” …

So, is he doing it on purpose? Or is it just a small-sample aberration? Votto, exceedingly secretive when it comes to his plan at the plate, fouled those questions off.

“You’re asking me about my approach and my tactics,” Votto said. “That’s kind of personal. I wouldn’t want to share the specifics when that could benefit the opposition.”

Is Votto simply employing a tactic to go against scouting reports early in the season? Is he trying for a few April ambushes when last year’s data is what everyone has had all winter to evaluate? Is he — gasp — losing bat speed and/or visual acuity?

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With the switch from the standard PITCHf/x pitch-tracking system to Trackman, a few missteps are to be expected. Dave Cameron, for example, recently pointed out that we have to be careful about reporting velocity right now. Jeff Zimmerman gave us a way to convert old velocities into today’s reality, and Tom Tango offered up way to use current readings to approximate velocities as they were calculated by the previous methodology. For those interested in the simplest possible method, it appears as though subtracting three-quarters of a mile per hour from a pitcher’s reported velocity arrives at roughly the same figure as the previous system would have produced.

But that doesn’t account for the situation in its entirety. If we look at what Brandon Finnegan did in his first (excellent) start, we’ll notice that the movement numbers are also a little off right now. It’s enough to want to throw your hands up and just emote, as I did on the latest episode of our Sleeper and The Bust podcast.

It’s okay to express frustration. It’s cathartic and release is good. Breathe deeply through the nose.

But we also need to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. Finnegan did not, as the leaderboards suggest, just record the ninth-most ride on a fastball that we’ve witnessed over the last 15 years. That’s not what was so impressive about the movement and velocities of his pitches in his 2017 debut. But discovering what was impressive can help us better navigate the suddenly unsteady waters of pitcher analysis.

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A couple weeks ago, Zach Buchanan wrote an article with the following headline:

Can Michael Lorenzen be a two-way player?

Spring training is full of headlines that begin with words like “can” or “will” and that end with a question mark. The regular season is for settling. It’s still that early part of the regular season where people will watch a game between the Phillies and the Reds on purpose, and, because I was doing that, myself, let me give you an update, by switching some words and punctuation.

Michael Lorenzen can be a two-way player.

It’s happening. And I can say that because it happened.

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